hhhoudini wrote:Reasonably happy with the Kubuntu. I have used KDE before and once I turn off most of the background sh**, I can live with it. To paraphrase the original developer of mutt who said "All mail clients suck. This one just sucks less."... All window managers suck, this one just sucks in a way I can work around without too much effort.

That's more or less been my relationship with GNOME 2 these past few years. I understand its ins and outs reasonably well by now, and know what to do to turn it into something that doesn't get in my way. One of the main reasons I'm still on 10.04 is that I didn't feel like figuring out how to deal with a different DE's suckiness.

It's kind of like the difference between office suites -- in terms of usability, OpenOffice/LibreOffice aren't really any better or worse than MS Office; they just suck differently.

I learned Linux using KDE on Gentoo. Then at home ran GNOME on Ubuntu for a period of time. This DE is really, really awkward to me. Maybe if I spend some time customizing it I'll get used to it. Can't hurt to give it a try since I have nothing critical depending on this installation.

e: By the way, all my hardware worked just fine upon first boot to the desktop. Audio device had to be switched, but everything worked fine after that.

DancinJack wrote:This is the first time I've even touched Unity. It is WEIRD.

Yes. The biggest issue seems to be the sheer alienness of it. I haven't (yet) managed to get past that, to decide for myself whether the paradigm even makes sense.

I don't think I'll have an issue once I get everything set up and going. I primarily use Windows so not being a full time linux user should help in the fact that I don't live and die by one DE. Just hope I can get past the shock and awe to give it a chance.

hhhoudini wrote:Letting the installer make all the choices the first time I installed, I ended up with an improperly aligned partition scheme, and the swap on the SSD. Nothing at all on the rotating drive. :/ Reinstalled again, taking a little more time to set partitions by hand. I haven't checked out the installer that comes with the plain Ubuntu, but if you use a SSD or 'advanced format' hard drive and you let the installer have it's way, you may want to investigate the partition alignment of your install.

From what I understand this is a long term bug in the installer that nobody seems bothered to fix, as it's status is only "confirmed" and has been for a long time.

So for SSDs and advanced format drives, it's probably better to use gparted (maybe in partedmagic) to pre-partition the drive aligning by 1MB and then install kubuntu.

A couple of days ago I did an upgrade to kubuntu 12.04 on my laptop and I'm very pleased, it seems stable and feels a little faster here and there.

Yeah, this is one of the reasons I haven't been using a "classic" Model M. The Windows key is actually more useful on Linux, since it tends not to be bound to other actions; this makes it ideal as a global hotkey modifier.

Yeah, this is one of the reasons I haven't been using a "classic" Model M. The Windows key is actually more useful on Linux, since it tends not to be bound to other actions; this makes it ideal as a global hotkey modifier.

You can thank my 1201N for that info. I use the Apple Keyboard on all my systems and I could have easily typed Dash = Command key.

srg86 wrote:From what I understand this is a long term bug in the installer that nobody seems bothered to fix, as it's status is only "confirmed" and has been for a long time.

Heh. I didn't do a lot or research on K/Ubuntu before I installed it. I just wanted something to go on the damn thing. In UEFI mode! There were a few issues with the m/b that I thought might be explained by booting into the legacy mode and it seems that it is indeed the case. Anyway, it's on. It's usable. I'll probably leave it alone for a few weeks before I get the urge to try and get Gentoo back on it. We'll see.

bthylafh wrote:I haven't had that problem, but be aware that VMware doesn't have an OpenGL video driver for Linux yet. If you want 3D accel at the moment, you're stuck with Virtualbox.

That's actually not the case anymore with the latest VMware Workstation Technology Preview. OpenGL is now supported for Linux guests, provided the distribution uses a kernel of 3.2 or later and includes the updated graphics stack that VMware upstreamed to X.Org.

Running gnome shell with my p9700 processor and modest 9300m gs gpu I've been able to watch fullscreen 1080p videos both in vlc and on youtube with few dropped frames, even with my 1200p monitor.

bthylafh wrote:I haven't had that problem, but be aware that VMware doesn't have an OpenGL video driver for Linux yet. If you want 3D accel at the moment, you're stuck with Virtualbox.

Yeah I saw that. It's too bad, but I'm just using it for software dev. at the moment. Learning Qt/C++ for work (no exp. with Qt, very little experience beyond simple stuff with C++) and wanted a similar home environment to develop on (RHEL at work). I guess I'll stick with 10.04 until I can figure out (or someone else does) what's wrong with 12.04 in VMWare Player.

I got it installed on my mom's laptop. I wasn't expecting to, but it turns out I like Unity. The way it uses the Windows key is amazing.

One thing I don't understand is why they got rid of the application/places/system menus. These easily could have been icons on the Unity bar, and then no one would have any real complaints. The new GUI would be there, and you could fall back on the old way of doing things if you got lost or just were faster.

interesting that there is so much Luddite hate for the part of the system that is probably the least used...

12.04 has presented problems here. The second monitor for my i3 laptop is not configurable like it is in 11.10 (known bug). On an old P4 laptop, 12.04 loses the touchpad and won't boot off the Promise drive controller. I have to go back to 10.04 in order to get fax capability on my all-in-one HP machine.

I wonder if maybe somebody should come up with a Windows 95 interface to keep the desktop Luddites happy ....

One thing I don't understand is why they got rid of the application/places/system menus.

Because manual searching through lists is nowhere near as effective as keyword and context matching for what you want to do. -- but the menu system is still there if you want it.

bryanl wrote:Because manual searching through lists is nowhere near as effective as keyword and context matching for what you want to do. -- but the menu system is still there if you want it.

I disagree.

In the most common use case I know exactly where the thing I want is and as I'm already using the mouse to bring up the menu, launch the app and move the window to where I want it, I can quickly hit First menu-> second entry on sub menu and bring up the calculator. In the Unity paradigm I'm switching back and forth between keyboard and mouse and that is slower and far less comfortable (need to re-find home keys etc).

In the case of an occasionally manually launched app, I have to remember the cutsie name that some developer has given to their app under Unity. In Gnome shell I can quickly flick through the menus looking for what sparks a memory.

In the admittedly rare with experience but common first time user case of not knowing which app is required e.g. launching a word processor, Unity forces you to either know the name or hunt through all the applications installed. In Gnome shell I can just go Applications->Office-> Oh look there is something with "Writer" in it's name, probably what I want.

If there's a simple way to get the categorised menu lists like in Gnome with Unity, please let me know. I run 11.04 at work and 12.04 at home, I know which GUI I'm more comfortable with.

I haven't even started on the tiny scrollbars and even tiny resize corners under Unity!

notfred wrote:In the case of an occasionally manually launched app, I have to remember the cutsie name that some developer has given to their app under Unity. In Gnome shell I can quickly flick through the menus looking for what sparks a memory.

Quick test of keyword searches ("office", "music", "file") seem to work well enough to find related apps. You can also browse installed apps and filter the results.

In the admittedly rare with experience but common first time user case of not knowing which app is required e.g. launching a word processor, Unity forces you to either know the name or hunt through all the applications installed. In Gnome shell I can just go Applications->Office-> Oh look there is something with "Writer" in it's name, probably what I want.

LibreOffice is in the dock right out of the box. Searching for "office", "text" and "doc" finds LibreOffice immediately.

I haven't even started on the tiny scrollbars and even tiny resize corners under Unity!

I installed 12.04 last night. So far it's great. Flash video works without any config. Everything seems nice. I like Unity, so no problems there. This has the makings of a completely easy to use operating system.

notfred wrote:I want to run with it for a little while before I decide if they've made enough changes to Unity to make it usable.

The system seems to be improved overall, the hud removes some annoyances, and history retention configuration is nice. Also, it's easier to make the unity icons smaller.

But I still find some things that totally annoy me. Pressing super key launches the menu which is designed for ELEPHANTS, BECAUSE THEY CAN'T READ AND SEE SMALL THINGS. If you have two windows on the screen, minimizing any of them is impossible, unless you switch to it, and then move the mouse all the way to top left corner, wait while menu is drawn, then target the minimize button and click it, and then repeat the same for the other one. The same goes for menus. If the app is not full screen, accessing menus suck. For example: select text, move mouse over 1920x1080 screen, edit/copy, move mouse over 1920x1080 screen, click on free spot, move mouse over 1920x1080 screen, edit/paste. HUD mitigates the problem, but I'm not sure it's the solution.

Moving the close minimize maximize to left side is no go as well, as it looks like crap in top row, near battery, mail and other indicators. CPU load and dynamic scaling widgets are gone.

I would say Unity is usable now, but I really don't like it that much, especially when it get's in a way, OFTEN!